The Harvard Crimson COMMENCEMENT 2023
Bronte-May Brough
Female Rookie of the Year
Field Hockey
Heart of Defense, and One of Gold: Bronte-May Brough By MAIREAD B. BAKER
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CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
oming into collegiate athletics, an uncomfortable adjustment for many Division I athletes is no longer being in the starting lineup, playing in every game, or racking in the most minutes played. For Bronte-May Brough, a first-year on Harvard’s top-notch field hockey team, it was quite the opposite. Leading the team in games played (17), games started (17), goals (12), shots (73), game-winning goals (3), and overall points (25), the defender was at the heart of each game in the 2022 season. Despite this, she hands off most of the credit to her team. “Field hockey is a team game,” the Uttoxeter, England native said. “Without the other 25 girls around me, the season wouldn’t have even happened.” Brough and other first-years on the team began their first season with the Crimson following a tremendous, history-making 2021 season by Harvard field hockey where it made it to the Final Four
of the NCAA tournament, losing in a double overtime heartbreaker to Northwestern, who went on to win the entire tournament. This made the 2022 season very highly-anticipated, one with high expectations and even higher standards — two things Brough was well aware of in moving across the Atlantic to Cambridge. “I feel like most of that expectation was within the team and driven by us,” she stated. “Obviously, this season, we didn’t quite achieve what we’d hoped. [It] all came down to the one Princeton game, and we didn’t quite achieve that.” Despite holding an impressive 13-4 record, in which all four losses were against top-15 opponents, Harvard fell short of the ending it had worked for, ending the season without an Ivy League championship nor a bid to the 2022 NCAA Division I Field Hockey Tournament. Instead, this right was granted to another Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) team, most likely Louisville or Wake Forest. The Crimson had toppled Louisville in 2021 during the NCAA tournament to reach the quarterfinal round for only the second time in program history. At the At the first game of the season, Brough drives the ball up the field in Hartime in 2022, Harvard was in a strong po- vard’s 1-0 victory over Miami University. COURTESY OF HARVARD ATHLETICS
TEAM RECAPS 8
sition to gain the bid, sitting at 16th place in the nation and holding a 0.765 winning percentage. Princeton had received an automatic bid from the Ivy League — which is given only one ticket — while eight other teams received at-large qualifiers, with four from the ACC and four from the Big Ten. Historically, Princeton field hockey is the main rival of Harvard. Each year, the Ivy League title switches off between the two schools. In 2021, Harvard earned the title after a well-fought penalty shootout, ending the game at 2-1. In 2022, Princeton had the advantage of an older squad, whereas many of Harvard’s starters and key players were
first-years and sophomores who had not yet experienced the Harvard-Princeton intensity — one where Ivy titles and NCAA tournament bids are at stake. This year, Brough and her classmates will have more experience in playing in Tiger territory and are motivated to earn the bid they missed out on last Fall. “We have Princeton week, which is the week before the Princeton game, [where] we [are] especially driven towards the game, adapting our training sessions, but mostly like focusing on ourselves and what we’re going to control,” described Brough about the way Harvard prepares for the Princeton game. “I think the team deals with it really, really well in a way that it’s more excitement rather than nerves — everyone’s really up
PAGE DESIGN BY TOBY R. MA—CRIMSON DESIGNER
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A year after winning the Beanpot title, the Crimson lost 3-0 to Boston College in the semifinals.
